A registered sex offender who was sentenced to prison in the 1980s after he told authorities that he had molested several boys whom he met through his religious work with Christian youth in Georgia was later allowed to participate for decades in ministry at a South Carolina church. The Brookwood church, a southern Baptist institution in the South Carolina city of Simpsonville, only just disqualified Jerry Sidell from serving there in any capacity, after he joined it in 1999 and fulfilled various ministerial roles. The church’s senior pastor, Bryan Jones, told congregants at a Thursday night meeting that Sidell had been “forthright” with Brookwood leaders back then about his previously pleading guilty in Georgia to the crimes of enticing a minor for indecent purposes and child molestation.
Without mentioning Sidell’s name, Jones said that church leaders implemented boundaries addressing his participation at Brookwood, which operates a preschool. Jones said those rules included a prohibition from working in or being around children or student ministries. Sidell, 69, also could not set foot in the school or those particular ministries’ spaces, Jones said.
And Sidell had to disclose his past to those in charge of any non-children or non-student ministries in which he wanted to take part, Jones told congregants, according to an audio recording of the meeting provided to the Guardian. Yet Jones – who was named Brookwood’s senior pastor in late 2022 – also suggested that he personally had only recently learned of Sidell’s status as a registered sex offender. But he said he reacted to that discovery by meeting Sidell and informing him that he could no longer perform with the church’s adult musical band or be a member of the small prayer group – also made up of adults – to which he belonged.
Jones also said Brookwood had enacted a new policy requiring “any” registered sex offender attending church services to enter through a specific door, check in with the institution’s security team and then sit with a designated guard. That designated guard would then escort the registered sex offender out of Brookwood after the completion of services, Jones said. As Jones put it, he and his fellow Brookwood leaders believe in “grace and forgiveness” – but, he added, “we felt … there are consequences for actions”.
An email to the Guardian from an individual familiar with Brookwood and Sidell contended that the church specifically put those heightened rules in place in either July or August. That was after authorities in Pawleys Island, South Carolina, reported arresting a registered sex offender named Warren Spence Perry for allegedly violating his probation by working at a school and children’s daycare run by a local southern Baptist church. Five other people connected to the Pawleys Island community church and its school, about four hours away from Simpsonville by car, were later also arrested on suspicion of illegally concealing Perry’s involvement with children there.
Perry, 70, pleaded guilty in 2023 to sexually exploiting a minor three years earlier, and a proposed federal class-action lawsuit has been filed at the church and school where he had been working, as WCIV and other South Carolina news outlets have reported. Furthermore, the individual who emailed the Guardian about Sidell accurately noted his having founded Rusty Bucket Music, a venue which – according to social media video and images – has hosted youth performers and patrons since its opening in 2019. Videos available online suggest Brookwood leaders have had a presence at Rusty Bucket Music in the South Carolina town of Gray Court, which is adjacent to Simpsonville.
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